By Brendan M. Keating, IntegTree LLC
Can anyone remember a Presidential election which has not been referred to as “historic” by the media? As tired of a cliche as that sounds, 2020 has certainly been a memorable and historically significant year, and there is something to be said for the unprecedented political uncertainty that Americans currently face – it has been a couple of decades since we waited this long for actual election results. But beyond the more general certification and recount delays we’ve endured, Americans, along with the rest of the world, have spent a large chunk of the past year wondering just what lay over the horizon for us.
Collectively the world has not faced this much uncertainty since the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, which upended some semblance of geopolitical stability following the collapse of the Berlin Wall; a new, unseen threat of terrorism lurked at home apparently, and in countries that many Americans could not find on a map until that fateful day. And yet in that era we had national unity despite the challenges we faced, and most of the world itself rallied around the United States in the face of that tragedy. But today, the whole world grapples with chaos – we are in this pandemic together, but every country is struggling on its own to keep its head above water as we await mass vaccination. While the domestic and international challenges faced by the incoming administration are legendary, and the return to a post-pandemic world will certainly be rocky, one wonders if we can glean any insight of our future from the electoral results.
The proposed policies of a Biden administration remain unclear to many Americans, in part due to the strange nature of the general election season, thanks to the pandemic. A cancelled debate, fewer town halls and campaigning, etc., all contributed to a much more hazy picture of what exactly Americans can expect (to the degree that campaign speeches ever reflect actual implementable policies, in any event). For many, a vote for Biden was a vote for Not Trump, and some hope to see what amounts to a third Obama term (i.e., a return to the familiarity of policies and agenda that many grew comfortable with, for right or wrong, in the Obama-Biden administration – stability). For others, it seems that we are on the cusp of quasi-revolutionary changes – e.g, reimagining the criminal justice system (“defund the police”), and the economy (the “Green New Deal”). It seems reasonable to think that at least one major constituency of the Biden electorate is in for shock – and disappointment – at the road we will take.
Additionally, regarding the uncertainty we face: an elephant in the room is Joe Biden himself – to whit his age and health. He is no spring chicken, and it is apparent to any impartial observer that he is not the same orator, and hence leader, that he once was. At the same time, Kamala Harris is certainly not a bashful woman, and one wonders the degree to which she will assert herself and her views, in the coming years – indeed both have accidentally said a “Harris Administration” or a “Harris-Biden Administration”1. Mere mistakes or Freudian slips, only time will tell – the overarching point is that Kamala Harris’ role in shaping the Administration policy is unclear – as is always the case with Vice Presidents (e.g., Dick Cheney was seen by many to be the foreign policy guru of the George W. Bush Administration, while Mike Pence seems to have largely taken the back seat to Trump outside of the Coronavirus Taskforce). But the potential rifts between Biden and Harris were starkly apparent in the Democratic primary debates – on issues that shook the nation all summer long – race relations and racial injustice. Harris brutally recounted numerous historical positions taken by Biden (e.g., working with segregationists, busing (forced or otherwise – a point of debate between the two), etc.)2, and famously stated that she “believed them” in regards to accusations that Joe Biden had sexually assaulted women3 – which is certainly an extremely awkward thing to think of your now-boss, to say the least. But more concretely, issues like Supreme Court expansion or packing (depending on your political ideology) – Harris is open to it, and Biden has spoken out against it previously (but declined to answer more recently), while the reverse is true with fracking – Harris against, Biden is sometimes for it (but not on federal lands)4. These kinds of divides make reading the tea leaves of the future of our country even more difficult — were these differences just posturing to capture various voting blocs in the Democratic primary? Or do they belie a wider philosophical chasm? Who will shape what policy areas in the Administration?
Further complicating matters, at the time of writing this article, the U.S. Senate is up for grabs. Historically a divided government would mean more policy stability due to legislative gridlock, but there has been a trend in recent administrations for utilizing executive orders to accomplish via Presidential powers what cannot be accomplished via the legislative branch. For example, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has already called on Joe Biden to forgive up to $50,000 in student debt via an executive order.5 When policy is dictated by the wishes of one individual rather than some modicum of representative unity in Congress (to the degree that Americans feel Congress represents them), we face an ever increasing amount of uncertainty and resultant instability.
Beyond these intra-executive branch concerns, the Biden administration may have large intra-party legislative branch landmines to dodge. It took Trump some time and effort to bring his Republican colleagues in Congress to heel and support his agenda, but Biden’s support seems far more precarious. A clique-cum-voting bloc of relatively far left-leaning Democrats (relative to Joe Biden at least) – i.e.,The Squad (Congresswomen Cortez, Omar, Pressley and Tlaib) are likely to gain members with the incoming freshman Bowman, Bush and Newman.6 The Progressives have already stated that they expect some major policy payoffs, and some of those may alienate the moderate wing of the Democratic party and independents, who saw Joe Biden as a ‘safe’ choice for President in a time of marked uncertainty.
This is particularly concerning as the civil and social unrest that gripped the United States in the summer of 2020 feels more like it was paused rather than resolved. For the Left there is a sense that the election should result in substantial change now that a Democrat is at the reigns again, but at the same time Kamala Harris has a complicated history as a prosecutor7 and so there are legitimate concerns about whether the promised, still vague, forthcoming changes could possibly appease activists and protestors once we move past the campaign rhetoric and bumper sticker slogans.
What does this all mean? In truth: no one knows. After the rollercoaster of 2020, one would be a fool to think that we can predict with any degree of certainty what will happen in the coming four years, let alone in the first quarter of 2021. Additionally, most Americans are still waiting for a time when they can visit friends and family without fear of taking an unwanted trip to the ICU, so our concerns about the future are more pressing and mundane than would normally be the case as a new Administration steps into office.
We have spent months simply waiting for something to change – and for many (people and organizations) 2020 has been a lost year, the full effects of which we may not realize for some time – on medical, psychological, economic, and socio-political fronts, so it is ironically fitting that we will have to wait some more. We will have to be content to observe the jockeying that occurs in the first several weeks of the Biden administration to see if America will get some semblance of stability, or instead an outbreak of intra-party infighting – or perhaps both!
Returning to the question we began with: can we glean any insight of our future based on the election results? No, probably not. But that does not mean we must be mere victims of happenstance. Organizations that survive the coming challenges will be, like organisms in nature, those that are most suited to adaptation. In these trying times, flexibility and resiliency will be key to not only survival, but growth. Adaptable organizations will best be suited to weather the storm. To quote the polymath Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in ever-uncertain times, one ought to “invest in preparedness, not in prediction”.8 No one knows what the future holds, but we do know we need to be ready nonetheless – being adaptable to rapidly changing circumstances will be the key to success in the coming four years, come what may.
About the Author
Brendan M. Keating is president of IntegTree LLC, an ethics, compliance and sustainability consulting company. He has worked on ethics and compliance courses for university programs, and has published a variety of works in several fields, including articles in the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics’ Compliance and Ethics Professional Magazine. He can be reached at Brendan.Keating@integtree.com
